In a Rocket Made of Ice

by Gail Gutradt

  So you need to understand what the people have to work with before you can come with suggestions of how they can change their life.

  My advice for people who want to do some good would be to go into a village, live at the level of the local villagers in the same kind of environment that they have, and then make changes and let people say, “Hey, I like the way you’re doing that. That’s good,” and then they can change too. This way you’re doing things with products they already have, rather than importing stuff from America, solar panels and things that they have no access to.

  This may seem a modest approach, but how many ambitious foreign aid projects have foundered because after expensive imported technology is installed, poor countries cannot afford to buy parts or hire foreign technicians to maintain them?

  Wayne’s past experience has also made him wary of becoming dependent on large donors. Although Partners in Compassion, the original organization founded by Wayne and Vandin, receives money from the Global Fund and other philanthropic organizations, the Wat Opot Children’s Community is an independent project, and draws its own support from many small donations and from money raised by volunteers. This way, Wayne hopes to avoid the scramble for funding that can happen when a large donor decides to pull up stakes. Sometimes, in the middle of a project, it becomes clear that it is not working as originally intended. If Wayne has accepted a grant, he has few options. He can continue to carry out the terms of the contract, or abandon the project, return the money and account for funds spent. Either way, he is jeopardizing his relationship with the donor and wasting energy and money.

  Wayne is also keenly aware of the law of unintended consequences. One night he told me about an email he had received from a fund-raiser. A wealthy, anonymous donor had offered to build houses for families with AIDS. They were willing to donate five thousand dollars for each house, a fortune in a country where a farmer’s wage averages a dollar a day. Wayne wrote back that in his opinion five-thousand-dollar houses would cause problems. It seemed clear to him that the donor, though generous and well intentioned, had no sense of what money could buy in Cambodia. Such a house would incite envy in the community and bring misfortune to its owner. As soon as construction was completed, every relative the family ever had, and many they did not know they had, would seek to move in with them, and before long someone would find a way to force the original family to move out. Or perhaps someone from the village, somebody with power, would remember a large unpaid debt and, again, the family would find itself homeless. Wayne suggested to the donor that he could build a perfectly adequate house for three hundred dollars. But the donor had other ideas and was never heard from again. Still, Wayne was convinced he had done the right thing.

  Ever since his time working with Navajo and Hopi youth in New Mexico, Wayne has trusted that he will be given what he needs to live and do his work. Although Vandin is paid as codirector of Partners in Compassion, Wayne takes no salary and donates his military pension and Social Security check to the Wat Opot general fund. When money is scarce, Wayne’s faith often leads him to search for a deeper message. He has occasionally had to borrow from his staff or even from the children’s savings to buy food for the community. But hard times can bring people together, and they remind Wayne that his staff is also committed to the children’s welfare. And for the children to pitch in from their modest savings accounts teaches them that they too can participate in taking care of a large family.

  I am responsible for the daily needs of over 70 children and still live on that simple Faith that GOD will supply all that I need for each day … and He does!…I believe strongly that GOD wants all of us to be totally dependent on Him. Just as He delivered Manna one day at a time in the desert, He wants us to trust Him one day at a time with our livelihood, and the best way of showing Him that we really do trust Him is by living without a protection plan, content with whatever He gives us each day. I know this goes against everything the Western society teaches, yet I truly believe that if one wants to fully experience the miracle of GOD’S love in their life, it is the only way that it can be done.

  God will Bless us in His own time and in His own way and I am content with that.

  Still, there are moments when the strain begins to show. At the height of the Iraq War, he wrote,

  It would be nice, for just one day, not to have to worry about feeding the 100 people who depend on me for their daily bread. It would be nice to know that all of my children will continue to get their medicine even after MSF pulls out. It would be great to have the resources on hand that would guarantee that all of the 1,000 families who now receive World Food Programme rice in our program will still be fed when we get dropped from the WFP in a few months. Dropped because they have run out of funds and the USA cannot pay its dues because it is too busy fighting a three-billion-dollar-a-week war against an enemy who spends far, far less and has far better results because the people of Iraq are not fools.

  To a well-to-do American visitor who wrote that he had so many blessings in his life that “sometimes I think they are just sitting around in Heaven having some fun with ‘Let’s just see how much good stuff we can pile on this guy and watch how he reacts,’ ” Wayne replied that he hoped the man would take a closer look at what he considered a blessing,

  because the life you are living can only be made possible by your country’s continuance of its present course. Are your blessings truly from Heaven or are they really only the spoils of WAR! A war that is causing death and destruction to millions of people around the world, and is taking food out of the mouths of my children as well.

  To me he added, “If ignorance was an illness I think I would have to perform Last Rites for a majority of the American people!”

  Over time I began to trust, as Wayne did, that things would work out. After Rebecca left Wat Opot and took her funding with her, I turned to my friends and neighbors in Maine. Wayne told me that their generous donations kept food on the table for most of that winter. So I was a little worried when I decided to return to Cambodia the next winter, concerned about who would take over the fund-raising. I wrote to Wayne with my fears, and characteristically he reassured me.

  I wouldn’t worry about where the money will come from. I find it more enjoyable to look back on how you were given the financial baton for a while and now it will pass to others and that is what makes living on faith great. Watching how things work out without ever having to worry about it.

  And he was right. Over time new volunteers came, and when they returned home they often raised money or recruited other volunteers. Like the branches of a great growing tree, even faraway friends and family did their part to support the people of Wat Opot.

  Yet money continued to be tight. Toward the end of my second visit, Wayne’s mother became seriously ill. His family wrote that he should come home if he wanted to see her again. Airfare was fifteen hundred dollars, and Wayne had virtually no money. He wrote to his family that he could not make the trip unless they sent him a ticket. They agreed, but there was still not enough in the bank to buy food and pay the bills for the month he would be gone. He needed another thousand dollars. I considered donating enough to cover expenses, but something told me I shouldn’t. I’m not sure why, but it did not seem this time to be my place to do that, and I walked around in a kind of agony as Wayne talked about canceling his trip. I checked in with myself again and again, but the answer was always, “No, not this time. It’s not your job.” Three days before his flight, Wayne went to Phnom Penh to cancel his ticket, but before he went to the travel agent he checked his bank balance one last time. Two donations, totaling exactly a thousand dollars, had just arrived.

  We talked about this afterward, and I told Wayne how conflicted I had been.

  “I’m glad you didn’t do it,” he said. “I need to believe in God, not in Gail.”

  “I wish I had your faith,” I replied.

  Wayne laughed, just a little exasperated, and said, “What more proof do you need?
”

  Wayne is the second oldest of a family with nine children, and the oldest boy. From his responsibilities as a child he learned how to be a leader. At first his parents would leave him alone with his younger siblings, and he tells of trying to get them to do chores. Usually this resulted in tantrums and chaos.

  I don’t remember how many times I had to remind them that when Daddy got home they were going to get theirs. I do know that by the time the car drove in I was really looking forward to them getting their butts spanked and sent to bed. What I wasn’t prepared for was my father’s reaction of disappointment after surveying the disaster area. “Wayne, I left you in charge. What happened?” I was speechless. How did I turn out to be the bad guy?

  Within minutes, Mom had a work crew going and the same brats that defied my leadership were busy cleaning up the mess that they had created and although it didn’t sink in right away, I began learning a valuable lesson:

  Good leadership is not about being the boss. It is about getting people you love to work alongside you.

  A big part of leadership is learning to take responsibility for what happens on your watch, even if someone else is the cause of a problem. To threaten my brother and sisters with what would happen when Daddy got home was a sign of poor leadership on my part and to be looking forward to their punishment was not a sign of love and concern for them but a sign of weakness and self-centeredness on my part.

  So when there is work to do, Wayne begins and the children immediately gather to help, not because of threats or even rewards, but out of love and a sense that they are part of a family. And because Wayne makes it fun to do things together—even picking up the trash.

  Wayne sometimes speaks of Wat Opot as the loving family he always wanted. Sometimes families of choice can offer a kind of love and acceptance we yearn for, but never manage to achieve, with our families of birth. And now Wayne has gone from being the big brother to being father to his many children, and to a few adults as well—both patients and volunteers. Wat Opot is very much a family, a place for the children to grow up, for all of us to grow in compassion and understanding, and when the children are old enough to leave, Wayne wants them to know that this is a place to which they can also come home again.

  Wayne wrote this poem about Chay, a little boy, and his mother, Yeang Lab, a woman with AIDS who brought him to Wat Opot so she could die knowing there would be a family to love him.

  INTO THE ARMS OF STRANGERS

  Yeang Lab and Chay.

  She would never let him

  out of her sight

  but day by day withdrew

  more and more

  into the shadows of his world…

  watching with Motherly pride

  yet with tears in her eyes,

  as he won over the hearts of others,

  and showered them

  with the hugs and kisses

  once meant for her alone.

  She left his life quietly…

  with no word of farewell,

  requesting to be taken to the hospital

  while he played in his new world.

  20

  Volunteers

  Between the time I heard about Wat Opot and when I actually left for Cambodia, half a year passed. I’ve written in Chapter 10 about spending some of that time taking a course on teaching English as a second language. I didn’t know any Cambodians, but I read up on their country and its history, and learned a few greetings in Khmer from the sweet couple who run a restaurant in my village in Maine. Unconsciously, though, I was stalling. The orphanage seemed just the sort of place I was looking for. A place like that. Hadn’t I begged the universe for service? And hadn’t the universe promptly offered me Wat Opot?

  I didn’t recognize it yet, but in those days Cambodia was consistently portrayed in the media as a terrifying place moving backward from an ancient glorious past to a hopeless future. Every story I read, every image I saw, perpetuated the stereotype of Cambodians as impoverished, emaciated or mutilated by land mines. Moreover, as an American living in a relatively safe community, I was afraid to expose myself to the risks I was convinced were rampant there. I longed to travel, to offer service to the poorest of the poor. But in Cambodia?

  My own journey to Wat Opot was not unique. Most volunteers stumble through its gates by accident, or after a series of coincidences that some describe as “guided.” Many people visit, but for those who stay on for a time, or who upon returning home are gradually engulfed by a powerful call to come back, Wat Opot is our own Brigadoon, a place that exists in a universe parallel to our normal lives.

  People who hear about Wayne sometimes call him a hero or a saint, and he has joked that I paint too rosy a portrait of him. Perhaps so, but there is a lot of just plain labor involved in running Wat Opot. Time that might be better spent with the children is eaten up by record keeping, corresponding and fund-raising. Staff must be trained and managed. Volunteers arrive with more baggage than just their backpacks, and the kids know exactly how to push their buttons, so on top of everything else Wayne needs to be our counselor too. Year after year, it is a matter of persevering, remaining committed to the children, doing what’s needed.

  Even before they arrive, some visitors speak of wanting to leave their mark on Wat Opot, of “creating a lasting institution.” Sometimes it sounds almost like a military occupation. Aid programs and AIDS and Cambodia itself are changing. Being nimble and able to adapt may be more to the point. Wayne was able to build a small, efficient program for a manageable number of people by devoting virtually round-the-clock attention. Wayne shows us what a person can do, and knowing his own limits and the limits of his program is part of his genius. He accepts his own finitude and has built only as much as he can keep alive and perhaps pass on to his successor. Although other people may learn from Wat Opot, Wayne’s operation is on a small, very human scale.

  Friends have said to me, “How painful to be with all those sick children.” But a vital part of what we are doing as volunteers is simply bearing witness to it all—the joyous and the heartbreaking alike. As my friend Luke Powell wrote to me of photographing land mine victims in Afghanistan,

  When little girls have told me how their legs were blown off or old women told of losing large families and being left alone, when men talked of picking up the pieces of close friends, I find that I had no problem hearing what they said, bearing it. It is always so chillingly clear that one must stand hearing about whatever the other has endured and was brave enough to recount.

  In truth, daily experience at Wat Opot is complex and chaotic. I wake up early in the morning and someone comes running up to me for a hug. Often there are several kids hanging off my arms on the way to breakfast. Most of the day it is kids playing, running in packs, sulking, hugging, laughing, dancing, studying, doing what children do. You play with them, pick them up when they cry, let them nap on your shoulder. It is easy to forget that some are HIV positive. If you give one kid a candy, word spreads, and suddenly you are besieged. It’s totally normal in some ways, while at the same time it is exceptional. A child bursts into tears—who knows why?—and then you remember that these are very much special-needs kids. Or is it just a normal reaction, as might happen in any schoolyard where kids are testing the pecking order? In any case it is all happening so fast that interpretation must wait until later, because at the same time something else is happening. Some visitors slept last night on the porch, and the children have discovered—air mattresses! You cannot imagine how much fun thirty kids can have with a couple of air mattresses if you have not seen it for yourself, and there is simply no way to translate, “Don’t bounce on that thing!” into Khmer. So you just sit back and enjoy them enjoying life.

  Sometimes the energy of the children overwhelms and exhausts me, but what better time to appreciate their life force than when overcome by its passion? The great miracle of Wat Opot is how it heals the spirits of these children so that they can manifest that vibrant, living energy. And her
e I am, sitting in the middle of that chaos, folding an origami crane or cradling two sleeping children, smelling their hair.

  I am tempted to philosophize about all this, but just as music is made of sounds and silences, and paintings are composed of colors and light and line, maybe helping comes from being available to whatever is happening, and not from theories. A lot is accomplished simply by showing up and being happy, and the more you go back the deeper you can go, like a funny old auntie who comes every year for the holidays.

  Without question, volunteers with specific skills are badly needed. Nurses, teachers, someone to manage the crops and animals. Right before I visited in 2009, Wat Opot was hit by an outbreak of measles. At that time Wayne had only one volunteer, a French-English nurse named Caroline. One by one, thirty kids developed high fevers.

  It would happen suddenly. A child would be playing and the next minute they would just go down, laid out where they fell. Wayne and Caroline picked them up and put them into bed and there they stayed, with no argument. These kids have been sick a lot in their lives; they know the drill.

  Some volunteers concentrate on special projects or on activities for the kids: a water storage and filtration system, craft projects, a bus trip to the zoo or to a mountain waterfall. Deb, a nurse from Maine, bought mattresses for the children, and then sorted through all their clothes, got rid of the worst of them and took a pickup truck full of kids to the market to shop for new outfits. Caroline donated a commercial washing machine, a huge improvement over small children washing their own clothing. Other volunteers involve their friends and home communities in a variety of creative ways.